Asian markets continue downward trend on Thursday

Asian markets continued their southbound journey for second day in a row on Thursday following selloff in US market overnight as yields on Spain’s 10-year bonds reached as high as 6.65%. The sell-off came after the European Central Bank said in a statement that it had not been consulted on the bailout for Bankia, Spain’s fourth-largest bank, and that such a recapitalization could not be provided by the Euro-zone central bank. The sentiments were also got clobbered after Chinese interest-rate swaps hit 18-month lows on Thursday on abundant liquidity and expectations of loose monetary policy in the coming months. One-year interest-rate swaps fell nine basis points to 2.42 percent near midday, their lowest since November 2010.

Meanwhile, Japanese Nikkei snapped the session with cut of over a percent, as the country reported anemic factory output growth of 0.2% in April, slower than expected. While, Taiwan benchmark fell over half a percent on Thursday, joining regional bourses in slides on mounting concern over Europe’s ability to solve its growing debt crisis and led by heavyweights such as TSMC. In addition Kospi edged lower as crude oil refiners underperformed; SK Innovation slid 3.5 percent while S-Oil fell 3.2 percent.